Whitney doco tracks a life out of control
WHITNEY: CAN I BE ME
The charmed life and sad demise of singer Whitney Houston. ANYONE who was around for the ascendance of Whitney Houston as a star in the 1980s probably cannot help but feel surprised, even stunned, by the tragic turn the singer’s life would take within a couple of decades.
Reports of drug abuse. Rumours of a tempestuous marriage to R&B artist Bobby Brown, including allegations of abuse from both parties. Personal and professional clashes within her family.
By the time Houston was found dead in a bathtub at the age of 48, her seemingly charmed life had spiralled towards a dark, stranger-thanfiction demise.
Five years after her death, Nick Broomfield’s heartbreaking documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me explores that turn, presenting the events of Houston’s life in a compassionate fashion without soft-pedalling the complexity of the woman’s relationships and personality.
It’s a poignant piece of work but also a fairly rigourous piece of investigative journalism, one that takes a lot of different factors into account.
Houston’s rise to fame was meteoric.
Even though she was the niece of acclaimed singer Dionne Warwick and a back- up singer for the likes of Chaka Khan as a teenager, her upbringing was relatively humble and low-key.
Of course, that all changed in the mid-80s when Houston’s self-titled debut album rocketed to the top of the charts, staying there for months in the US and eventually selling 25 million copies.
She won awards, sold out arenas worldwide and became a movie star with her role in 1992’s The Bodyguard.
Behind the scenes, though, there was turmoil — Houston’s mother Cissy, a singer herself, was reportedly jealous of her daughter’s success, and Houston herself was the target of a $100 million lawsuit filed by her father’s company (although Houston would claim her father, John, had nothing to do with the case).
Her relationship with husband Brown was viewed as either passionate or volatile, and there was a bitter feud between Brown and Houston’s long-time companion and assistant Robyn Crawford, rumoured to be Houston’s lover.
Neither Brown nor Crawford are interviewed for Can I Be Me and while Broomfield has done a terrific job corralling existing material, some of it seen for the first time here, and organising new interviews, the absence of input from these two people is felt keenly.
And while the documentary offers plenty of evidence that enables viewers to speculate why Houston’s life spiralled out of control the way it did, mainly exploitation and betrayal by those closest to her, it doesn’t offer any definitive explanation of why her fairytale life became so grim. That’s perhaps to be expected — real life doesn’t always offer cut-and-dried reasons.
But it also makes Can I Be Me (the title comes from a phrase Houston would often say to loved ones and work colleagues) additionally sad, as does the archival footage of a beautiful, charismatic performer with a truly soaring talent.